Place Value Snake

The concept of place value is not easy to grasp for very young children. The place-value snake is a delightful activity which helps in fixing the concept in the mind of a young child.

Procedure:
To make a place value snake, take a strip of paper and fold it. Write a number, say 4376, on the visible part of the folds. Hidden away in the folds of the paper are zeros and ‘+’s. When the snake is opened, the expanded form of the number appears. Any child can make the place value snake and show it to his friends. In the course of doing this he learns to associate the place of a digit with a power of 10. The snake can also include decimal numbers.